E 58 
.B23 
Copy 1 




THE 



ROMANTIC SCHOOL 



IN 



AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY 



ADOLPHE F. BANDELIER 



Read before the N. Y. Historical Society, Feb. 3, ,885 



NEW YORK 

TROWS PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING CO. 



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THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL IN AMERICAN 
ARCHEOLOGY. 



On the 13th of October, 1492, Columbus landed on the little 
island since identified as " Watling's Island,," one of the Ba- 
hamas. Scarcely a year after, the street-singers of Florence 
celebrated the event in. what the newsboy of to-day would call 
" All about the newly discovered Island " style. This first work 
of fiction about America— although it is a mere popular ballad- 
is as true as many historical works on aboriginal America of 
this century, if not truer. 

As the achievements of Columbus and Vespucci, and the con- 
quests of Cortes and Pizarro became known, slowly and imper- 
fectly, a tendency to popularize the events of colonization, the 
picture of the new continent and of its inhabitants, sprang up in 
Europe. Porcachi, Martin Waldseemuller, Bordone, were among 
the, first to publish " Americana" with the view of rendering 
them accessible to the masses, as far as those masses could 
read. Alongside of them ran the " Decades " of Peter Martyr, 
an intelligent report on court-gossip, an analysis but not a sy- 
nopsis of documents privately accessible to the writer, who was 
himself under the influence of America's first great "boom." 
The original reports of voyages and conquests were also 
printed, still they circulated but little, the great collection of 
Ramusio being the first attempt to make them accessible on a 
larger scale. 

About the middle of the sixteenth century the first systematic 
" Histories" of America make their appearance in the works 
of Gomara and Oviedo ; they initiate the most prolific period for 
American literature up to the present time. It embraces local 
historians, ecclesiastic histories, linguistic works, and books of 
travel. The Indian himself, whom the Church taught to read 



4 



and write, became repeatedly the chronicler of his race. This 
period lasted until nearly the middle of the seventeenth century ; 
Acosta, Garcia, and Herrera are its last great luminaries. The 
language of these authors was mostly Spanish, for America was 
yet controlled by Spain, other nations limiting themselves to 
circulate the knowledge which Spanish literature imparted, and 
to diffuse it for their own benefit. 

Gradually succumbing in the gigantic struggle which it had 
maintained, against everybody almost, for more than a century, 
Spain closed its American colonies to the foreign world. This 
prevented access to that portion of America which was histori- 
cally most interesting, and created a literary decay over all 
Spanish dominions. Few books of original research appeared 
thereafter in the Spanish language, until the present century, 
relating to American topics. Solis is the only author of note 
fully published ; local historians are not numerous. Boturini's 
work produced but a significant catalogue ; the untimely death 
of Munoz interrupted his great enterprise. 

In the meantime, France and England, having occupied a 
part of America, had undertaken work on aboriginal history. 
Hennepin, La Hontan, and Du Pratz foreshadowed Charlevoix, 
Lafitau and James Adair were preparing the ground for Rob- 
ertson. 

The expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish America induced 
members of that society, who had fled to Italy, to publish the 
knowledge secured by them on American matters. It origi- 
nated works like that of Clavigero on ancient Mexico, of Molina 
on Chile, and they promoted a new interest in the study of 
American aboriginal history. 

The moment was most opportune. Boturini's fate had 
awakened sentimental interest. The collections of long-for- 
gotten manuscripts made by the Spanish Government for the 
benefit of Munoz caused that government to become approach- 
able to foreign scholars. When, therefore, Robertson undertook 
to write his great philosophical work, the " History of Ameri- 
ca," he had access to sources which Spain alone possessed. His 
book, while based of course on such sources, applies to their 
statements much critical scrutiny, and is the first attempt to 



5 



place critically reviewed bibliography of America within reach 
of the public. 

Robertson and Clavigero, independent of each other as to 
impulse, often antagonistic in their views, mark the beginning 
of a new era in American history. 

Clavigero vanished, Robertson was reclining in the easy- 
chair which a useful life had prepared for him, when Humboldt 
appeared upon the stage. 

Fifteen years ago I characterized the results of his explora- 
tions as being equivalent to a rediscovery of tropical America. 
Columbus had proven the possibility of reaching, Humboldt 
proved, not only the possibility, but the necessity, of improving 
it. He combined with his researches on the physical constitu- 
tion of the New World a lively interest for its ancient inhabi- 
tants, and by placing aboriginal man, as described by his pre- 
decessors, in direct and intimate connection with that nature 
which he so ably studied and so admirably described, electri- 
fied future generations in behalf of the aboriginal history of 
America. 

In qualifying the researches of Humboldt as a rediscovery 
of tropical America, I must notice a certain analogy between 
the century after Columbus and the times following Humboldt. 
From the first to the fourth decade of this present century, 
contributions to aboriginal history are also mostly confined to 
books of travel, reports of explorations, and to publication of 
manuscript sources. Only about the middle of this century and 
since, works of larger compass and greater philosophic depth 
make their appearance. By the side of these are huge compi- 
lations and collections, and numberless tracts on special topics. 
The second half of the nineteenth century promises to be more 
prolific yet in literature on American antiquities, than the 
second half of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seven- 
teenth. 

And yet it cannot be denied that, while research in this 
branch is carried on unabated, popular interest in it is strangely 
on the wane. It was not so in former times — an immense litera- 
ture, on ancient America, in almost every language of Europe, 
destined for the masses and published and partly republished 



6 



during four centuries almost — shows that the public formerly 
appreciated the subject as much, if not more, than to-day. If 
we compare the technical means of one hundred years ago with 
those now at our disposal, it must strike us that the expansion 
of popular literature on ancient America, since then, has not 
been in proportion to increase of facilities of publication and 
circulation. The study of American antiquity is now largely 
regarded as a harmless pastime at best, and the subject itself 
so much a thing of the past, as to make its investigation useless 
for the present and future. 

There has been a time, when such a public feeling might 
have been attributed to " ignorance of the masses." This 
time, however, is past. Besides, there were periods during the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when literature on Ameri- 
can aboriginal topics was almost " fashionable." The subject 
itself has, ever since Columbus, engaged the attention of the 
most brilliant minds. If American aboriginal history is not as 
popular now as it was before, it is not to be charged to the 
public, neither can it be attributed to a lack of intrinsic value 
of its study for mankind. The difficulty rests with the methods 
of research, and therefore with the results presented, as in pro- 
portion to legitimate demands of practical life. 

Our age is above all a critical age. It does not merely 
examine. In the interest of truth it dissects and compares. 
These are the technical f " ressorts " of science. History, 
whether ancient or modern, cannot remain behind the age 
in these technical appliances. What mankind demands of 
History is not a discovery of forces and laws useful to render 
life more agreeable and profitable, — it asks for the truth of the 
past, in order to preserve the present and future from its Errors. 

There is no doubt but that, from time to time, American abo- 
riginal history has amply responded to this call upon its duties : 
— in proportion to the means at its disposal. Those means of 
research are usually on a level with the demands of time. 
Has the present period done its duty ? Has it, with all the 
increase of details at its disposal, eliminated sufficient error 
from the literature of preceding centuries to make its results 
adequate to the practical demands of to-day ? These queries 



7 



may be condensed into two questions : First, what does the 
present age demand of American aboriginal history for the use 
of practical life ? Secondly, how far have these demands been 
complied with ? 

North of Mexico, these demands are comparatively simple. 
They reduce themselves to the inquiries of " What is the Indian 
and how shall we treat him ? " and " Has not the Indian or any 
hypothetic predecessor of his left monuments from which we 
may derive a lesson for our present and future benefit ? " 

South of Mexico and in Mexico itself the questions become 
more complex. Aboriginal Society having been more perma- 
nent in those countries in places, the practical mind asks not 
only: "What did nature afford the inhabitant for his suste- 
nance and progress ? " but also, " What use did that inhabitant 
make of such natural resources ? " and finally : " What has been 
the effect of contact of European civilization with the aborig- 
ines up to the present time ? " 

The majority of writers of this day represent the Indian as a 
human being on the lowest scale of culture as to the arts of life, 
but endowed with aspirations and moral principles sometimes 
in advance of those of actual society. Consequently we should 
be entitled to treat this Indian according to the moral and 
mental principles pervading civilized communities of to-day. 
We are thus led to ask of him to become as we are now, while 
he is left to live as our ancestors may have lived untold centu- 
ries ago. 

It is the tendency of many scholars to show that, previous to 
the Indian, another race inhabited this northern continent, which 
race has left behind lasting monuments, utterly incomprehen- 
sible in their purpose and design, and therefore of no value to 
succeeding generations. 

Tropical America is represented as being, at the time of its 
first discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, replete 
with natural wealth of every description, and therefore favor- 
able to the sustenance and development of the human race. 

' Under these favorable circumstances, mankind, we are told, 
attained a degree of civilization equal to that of many nations of 
the old world. We are told that that civilization amassed great 



8 



wealth, reared great edifices, developed a social and political 
structure of great intricacy and firmness, — acquired considerable 
knowledge in science, notable skill in arts, — whereas in mechan- 
ical appliances it remained on the level of the savage, using 
stone and flint wherewith to shape and whereof to make its 
tools, — native copper, beaten and rarely fused, taking the place 
of the former incidentally, — making pottery without the potter's 
wheel, — weaving the most intricate patterns with the hand-loom 
only. We are told of this people that they were mild, inoffen- 
sive and gentle, virtuous and kind, but that they not only 
sacrificed their prisoners of war, but made war in order to get 
prisoners for sacrifice, — that among them marriage was a barter, 
chastity a restraint. 

The overthrow of that civilization is represented as being 
due to greed and fanaticism alone, supported, however, by gun- 
powder, iron, and the art of navigation with the compass. The 
result of this violent overthrow was, we are informed, centuries 
of debasement, of abject slavery, during which the natives were 
tyrannically compelled to remain at peace with each other, 
forcibly taught a foreign idiom which enabled the various tribes 
to hold peaceable conversation, cruelly educated to read and 
write even in their own aboriginal idioms for which they had 
no phonetic characters, the printing-press insidiously placed at 
their disposal, and that out of this condition, after three hundred 
years of servitude, these natives emerged fully able to grasp 
every advantage which civilization of the nineteenth century was 
able to afford. 

The picture thus presented is so contradictory in its com- 
ponents that it cannot be true. Lack of truth is fiction or 
romance. I am therefore justified in characterizing the tendency 
in literature of to-day on aboriginal America as romantic. 

The touchstone of every branch of human investigation is its 
practical working. What has been the practical result of this 
romantic inclination in American aboriginal History ? 

Our Indian policy has been kept vacillating between two 
extremes : the one of treating the Indian as a mere savage and 
as an obstacle to civilization, only fit to be removed, even in the 
most violent manner, — the other of fondling him like a child 



9 



endowed with the highest qualifications for rapid progress. 
Both extremes have called forth equally disastrous results. 

The study of the mounds failing to recognize any practical 
object in the construction of the most remarkable specimens 
thereof, situated in the Mississippi Valley, has left subsequent 
settlers without warning from impending floods, of whose occur- 
rence in past centuries the high mounds bear testimony. 

In tropical America, descriptions of a locally exuberant 
nature have created the impression of uniform wealth through- 
out the tropics, and the tales about wealthy and civilized nations 
have strengthened this view, and incited to many disastrous 
enterprises in the last three decades of this century. Had it 
not been for the belief in Europe, that the Indians of Mexico 
secretly hoped for the return of a sovereign from the East in 
order to re-establish native power, French intervention in aid 
of Maximilian would never have been attempted. No such 
hope ever existed, and as soon as the French withdrew, the 
same Indians, upon whose support the Empire mostly relied, 
turned against that Empire and destroyed it, together with its 
unfortunate standard-bearer. The Mexican aborigines never 
knew monarchy previous to the advent of Cortes ! It has been 
written, printed, and said, that the aborigines of Mexico pos- 
sessed great wealth, derived from mines which they concealed 
from Spanish greed ; the majority of attempts to discover 
such mines has resulted in disastrous failure. Hardly a miner 
tramps down into Sonora or Chihuahua without expecting to 
find there some of the gold which " the Montezumas " failed to 
extract, and the greedy Spaniards were not lucky enough to dis- 
cover. Hardly a Stock-Company is formed for the purpose of 
working claims in the Southwest or in Northern Mexico, with- 
out the afterthought : if the Indians secured so much wealth out 
of that region, and the Spaniards so much more afterward, how 
much more may yet be concealed for the benefit of that " man 
of manifest destiny," the Anglo-American. No attention is paid 
to the fact : that Indians never mined, and the history of Span- 
ish mining is only known in conventional form, as a tale of op- 
pression and cruelty to " Lo, the poor Indian." To Spanish Law 
and to its rigid enforcement in the past no thought is ever given. 



10 



The practical effect of the picture, which aboriginal History 
as written to-day presents to the public, has therefore been 
often detrimental to that public's interests, and no surprise 
need be felt at the lack of support which many attempting to 
promote the study of American antiquities have to deplore. 
It now behooves us to consider : First : what are the causes 
which have led to these romantic, therefore not impractical, 
tendencies in literature on American aboriginal history. Sec- 
ondly : what efforts have been made to place research on the 
.field in question on a practical and useful basis. 

Aboriginal history as written to-day and. the history of the 
Spanish conquest, do not vary, in ethnologic results, from those 
histories as written in the sixteenth century. Prescott and 
Gomara, Brasseur de Bourbourg and Torquemada, all describe 
the Indian of aboriginal Mexico in the same light. And 
yet four centuries of accumulated knowledge and experience 
ought to have enabled us to look at the Indian of the past, at 
the 3 downfall of his culture and society, otherwise than through 
mediums, which the lack of knowledge of their time, the pas- 
sions and interests incidental to a period of first contact, have 
rendered imperfectly transparent. However carefully and 
honestly we may copy their statements, as long as we do not 
dissect and compare, we remain but a faithful scribe only, and 
give to the public a reflected picture not of things as they were, 
but as they were looked at and appreciated three centuries ago. 
Since then the world has progressed, and historical study has 
secured the benefit of auxiliary branches unthought of before. 
In few cases only have these branches been called upon to check 
the statements of eye-witnesses, the reports of those, who, 
after the downfall of ancient Society, reorganized that Society 
on a new plan, both spiritually and in temporal affairs. 

No attention is paid as yet to the fact that the religious 
creeds of the Indians over the whole American continent were 
moulded on the same pattern, that their social organization 
was fundamentally the same among the Cherokees, the Pueblos 
of New-Mexico, the Mexicans and the Peruvians, that the 
system of government of the Iroquois differed from that of the 
Mexicans but very little, and that the same principles pervade 



1 1 

aboriginal architecture from one arctic circle to the other, vary- 
ing only in degree, and not in kind. It is constantly overlooked 
that the fact of a certain class of buildings being of stone, and 
another group of wood, does not necessarily imply a superior- 
ity of the builders of the former over the builders of the latter, 
and that the long-house of the Iroquois shows as much mechan- 
ical skill, if not more, as the honey-combs in whi^h the New- 
Mexican Indians still live in part,— that the carved dwellings 
of the Northwest coast denote an advance in art not behind 
that of aboriginal Yucatan. 

No thought has been given to a peculiar trait in aboriginal 
character ; that the Indian is never absolutely sedentary nor 
constantly shifting, and therefore, as tradition and history con- 
clusively show, that the great number of Ruins in existence 
prove not a contemporaneous large population, but the successive 
stuffings of that population over a vast area within a correspond- 
ingly long time. Such facts, taught by ethnological investiga- 
tion and sober archaeological research, are rarely, if ever, 
combined with the statements of older literature, and this litera- 
ture itself is merely copied and seldom critically sifted. 

Else, how could the terminology, for instance, which the au- 
thors of the sixteenth century applied at random to every feature 
of Indian Society, still stand in the books of grave and honest 
authors of to-day. That Bernal Diez should speak of a Mexi- 
can "King," Fray Marcos of New-Mexican " Kingdoms," 
Quesada of a New-Granadensian " pontiff," need surprise us as 
little as, that early English voyagers mention Indian " Kings " 
in New-England, an " Emperor " Powhatan, and a " Princess " 
Pocahontas in Virginia ! But instead of accepting this termi- 
nology for what it was really intended, namely, terms of com- 
parison selected from types accessible to the limited knowledge of 
the times, it has been faithfully copied by generation after 
generation down to this day, and is finally accepted as express- 
ing the true state of things in America at the time of Colum- 
bus and Cortes ! 

And while this terminology, comparative in its origin, ab- 
solute only according to modern interpretation, is clung to with 
singular tenacity, the facts about Indian Society as told by the 



12 



same authors and their contemporaries are lost sight of. No 
notice is taken of the existence, among all the aborigines of 
Mexico and Peru, of a supreme council whose members were 
elective and which dictated, over the heads of the so-called 
" Monarchs." While the election of Mexican head-chiefs is 
conceded, the fact that Montezuma was superseded during his 
lifetime is ignored. The significant division of Society into 
clans is not considered, the feature that no individual tenure of 
land existed is disregarded. All these facts are proven by the 
writers of the sixteenth century themselves ! 

The numbers of the aboriginal population in Mexico and 
Peru are exaggerated on the strength of statements of the con- 
querors, and on the authority of early missionaries. It is con- 
stantly overlooked that, among the former, comparisons only are 
made, for the purpose of illustration and encouragement. The 
assertion of Motolinia : that four millions of Indians were bap- 
tized in Mexico during his time, is often quoted, but no atten- 
tion is paid to the explanation given seventy years later, by an- 
other ecclesiastic, Antonio de Remesal. The latter states, that 
the Indians managed to become baptized as often as possible, in 
order to get a new name and a new shirt, and that the earliest 
missionaries, unaccustomed to Indian types, and therefore un- 
able, at first, to distinguish one Indian from the other, frequently 
baptized the same neophyte a great number of times. Refer- 
ence is made frequently to the letter of Bishop Zumarraga, 
dated 1 53 1 , and to the information therein imparted, that one 
million of Indians had been baptized in Mexico up to that year. 
The original, however, of that letter, and the earliest print 
thereof, distinctly say two hundred and fifty tJwnsand only ! 

These are only a very few illustrations of the manner in 
which aboriginal history of America is mostly studied and 
written to-day. In every respect the first duty of an historian, 
thorough criticism, is lamentably neglected, and the labor con- 
fined to honest but sterile reading and superficial quoting. 

Criticism is not merely censure, quite as often it leads to 
approval, and when impartially performed, its outcrop is always 
justice and truth. A school of historical literature which pre- 
tends to write history without the aid of judicious criticism 



13 



creates illusion, propagates fiction, and may deservedly be 
called the romantic school in American aboriginal history. 

That this school has failed to perform its duty in modern 
times we have seen ; that its tendencies were not approved by 
all scholars remains to be established here. Already Acosta 
exhibits a critical spirit very remarkable for his time, and 
Garcia treats of the Origin of Indians in a way of impartial 
criticism never excelled since. Herrera is very careful in his 
choice of sources and guarded in his conclusions. In the 
eighteenth century Lafitau and Adair seem to represent the 
beginnings of American ethnology, but the negatively partial 
criticism of Spanish authors on the part of Adair destroys much 
of the good effects of his otherwise valuable book. The purely 
negative dissertation of De Pauw hardly deserves mention here, 
but Robertson's classical book marks, as I have already stated, 
an advance in means of historical study and methods of research, 
worthy of imitation in the present age. Unable to divest him- 
self of the terminology adopted by his predecessors, he still 
does not limit himself to submissive acceptance of their views. 

In this century the purely negative book of Willson has at 
least produced one good effect. It directed the attention of 
Lewis H. Morgan to the advantages to be derived from a crit- 
ical study of documentary history for our understanding of the 
past, present, and future of the aborigines. A born ethnolo- 
gist, he made of his favorite branch a valuable auxiliary for 
historical research, and by including archaeology in the circle 
of alliance, became himself a model investigator of ancient his- 
tory. Through the influence of his labors American ethnology 
has at last become a science, American archaeology a sober 
and practical system of researches, and a new light has been 
thrown on the methods of consulting documentary history. 
But Lewis H. Morgan, that child of the State of New York, 
has done more yet. By showing that aboriginal man in America 
shifts or stays, "under the influence of physical causes" he 
has indicated to historical study its most valuable ally, geog- 
raphy in its widest acceptance. 

If, therefore, American aboriginal history appears to-day 
under a cloud, there is every reason to hope that erelong this 



14 



cloud will be dispelled. The days of historical fiction are past, 
the progress of science in auxiliary branches is alone great 
enough & to carry the history of America upward to those 
heights when it shall become a critical, and therefore practi- 
cally useful, branch of human knowledge. 



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